Trust

🤝Trust is regularly overestimated in negotiations. And regularly underestimated. Often by the same people.

Benjamin Franklin looks around the table.

“Trust is a strange thing. Nobody wants to be the first to give it—yet everyone expects it from the other side.”

Machiavelli nods.

“Because trust can be costly.”

“Distrust can be too,” Franklin replies.

At this moment, there is no immediate objection.

That is what makes the discussion dangerous.

Many negotiators treat trust as a moral category. A question of character.

But trust has an economic effect.

It accelerates decisions. Reduces controls. Simplifies coordination. Expands room for action.

Distrust does the opposite.

“Business is done between people,” Franklin says.

“Business is done between interests,” Machiavelli replies.

Franklin smiles.

“Then explain why some people do business with each other for decades!”

Machiavelli falls silent.

Longer than usual.

“Because their interests remain compatible over decades.”

Socrates grins.

“That was surprisingly close to agreement.”

Thomas More, who has been listening quietly until now, speaks up.

“I know people who have worked together for decades—not because their interests are identical, but because they have never disappointed each other. That is not calculation. That is character.”

Machiavelli studies him intently.

“Character,” he says, “is the most expensive way to reach the same outcome.”

“And the most durable,” Thomas More replies calmly.

Maimonides joins the conversation. The others are increasingly uneasy when he speaks.

“Trust is not created by intentions,” he says.

“But by predictability.”

The sentence hangs in the air.

In complex negotiations, the decisive question is rarely: Do we trust each other?

It is: What exactly can we rely on?

The difference seems small. It is anything but.

The best negotiators do not replace trust with contracts. Nor do they replace contracts with trust.

They understand the function of both.

What is trust to you: the starting point, without which nothing begins? Or the result of lived consistency?